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Love

This rant or ramble or whatever it's going to be has been waiting to come pouring out for a while now, so I'm just gonna type away and see what happens. I'm making a conscious choice to embrace vulnerability on this one and just trust. I may get excited and I may swear a little.

Love is everywhere, it's within us all, we all have the potential and capability of experiencing it, living it and receiving it. Love is so many things. I think of it as an intention, and a connection to something of immense beauty and goodness that it's ok not to fully understand.

I wrote about prayer a long time ago here and was on about similar things, and although I don't talk about it much, I'm not at all religious. I wouldn't even call myself spiritual. I'm just curious, and interested in living a life with love as I understand it. I say this because the next bit sounds like it refers to something divine or spiritual, and I guess that makes me a bit uncomfortable, so I want to make sure I'm saying it my way.

The way I see it, there is goodness in the world and goodness in us.

There just is!

We know it's there, because we experience things like joy and fun and happiness and compassion and empathy and love.

Shit, even sadness shows us that love exists – when I feel sad at the suffering of another being, I know that is because I'm capable of love.

If I feel sadness at some non loving crap being directed at me, I guess that also shows me that I know love and know what isn't love. And I think that any time any of us allow ourselves to accept or internalise crap projected at us by others, or have got to the point where we invite or expect it, we can take that as a sign that we need to learn to show ourselves love again.

Love encompasses respect, compassion and empathy. In order to show those things to others, we need to feel them for ourselves. It's a chicken and egg thing. It doesn't matter which way you begin to restore love. I do believe though that to restore love and respect for yourself, beginning by showing love to another is a highly effective way of getting that moving.

So I reckon love is something which connects us with this thing which I continue to choose not to label or identify and continue to have faith in.

For me, love contains integrity (and a list of other things I value) and is part of my guiding compass for doing the right thing. To love others, I must love myself, and to love myself I need to be living my values, which means doing the right thing, with love, for the highest good. It means intending only good things for others, avoiding causing harm or hurt, and putting in the effort in life I know I'm capable of. It means standing up for what I believe in, setting an example, and being brave enough to do what I believe is right whether or not it's popular.

I believe part of love is the absence of judgement, and that whilst I know I do it, that I am flawed and imperfect, that if I continue to work at living by my values then I am pointed in the right direction, continuing to use my moral compass to adjust my trajectory towards that thing that I know is good, that I know is love.

Love is common sense. It makes sense that we will experience a better quality of life if we are happier more of the time, and I don't know about you, but I feel happier when I'm functioning better, living congruently with my values and allowing love to flow in my life.

Hmm, yes love can be like something flowing – it moves in and out of us. If it gets stuck one way, it gets stuck the other way too. When we unblock ourselves with a bit of bullshit removal, love flows more freely and effortlessly.

When love is flowing freely through us, we feel more connected. Feeling isolated and alone sucks. Sure, I love some quiet time to myself, but I still need to connect with other human beings (and animals too, and nature). We all need to feel some kind of connection and belonging.

Speaking of animals and nature, love is linked with those too. It's been shown that being in nature and having pets both have a calming, healthy effect on us. Whenever we cause harm to another person, animal or nature, that's not love and it's not good for us. (At this point I admit that I eat meat). Living a loving life is better for our health and well being.

Living a loving life also sets the example and enables and encourages others to do the same. Every choice we make has a ripple effect. A smile or a hug or a kind word can be life changing, and the feeling of love you've given is likely to be passed on to many others. When we put it out there, we're influencing the world we're living in, so that stuff about good deeds coming back to us is just common sense really; nothing magical about it.

Love is not black and white, right or wrong. Love is all kinds of variations on all kinds of scales. The value of our choices is relative. Any choice we make which is more loving than before is a step closer to love. Love isn't a perfect thing which can be defined and put in a box. It certainly bloody isn't a stick to hit people with or judge them with.

Love is an intention. The intention to point ourselves towards what we just sense, feel and know is good. We can't always see the direction clearly; there's no lighthouse. The lighthouse is within us. That doesn't mean we have to go it alone and work it all out for ourselves though. We do need, I believe, to form our own opinions and avoid blindly following any kind of crowd, but the love that's within us is also within everyone else and all around us, and we have the ability to tune into it, so to speak, giving us strength.

Bullshit is still bullshit, and calling something love or doing something in the name of love doesn't make it so! Fortunately bullshit causes cognitive dissonance, and there will be telltale signs.

Love is a choice! We choose it freely. It is a decision we make. Love is something we can do, feel, be and experience. We can block it off out of fear or we can let it in. Love is the opposite of fear.

We can embrace love in all its variations and entities, in all its forms and diversity. We can pick and choose bits and pieces. We can love parts and aspects of people, cultures and ideas without needing to agree with every part. As we build our experience of love throughout our lives, we open ourselves up to more possibility and higher levels of what we are capable of experiencing and contributing.

Comments

I like the combination of logic analysis and goodness factor, makes for an interesting read. That goodness may manifests as a supernatural factor definitely contributing to unblocking alot of 'BS' to increase the 'flow factor' connection between intention and action effects. Bravo & thank you Yvette! :)

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